Monthly Archives: January 2015

The squares are all stitched together, the border started on it, and I got bored. Especially since I have no intention of keeping the thing.

I need to wash the big ball of yarn and put it and the remains of the other up for sale. If it doesn’t sell, it goes to the swap shop or a thrift store. That original 4″ square I still have, and I probably will keep it. But the rest? Nah, ain’t interested.

My big news is that in the course of working on the bedroom yesterday, I found where I’d filed the printout of the memoir with the editor’s comments from the last edit. I managed to get through 66 pages of the thing; no flashback. Writing and editing it have been harder for me than actually living through all the events. It’s a condensed “bad parts version” of my life: one after the other. Because of that, instead of being like handling a stick of dynamite every now and then, it’s like being given a box, with a fuse lit, at least for me.

Yesterday, when I was done, I could feel it at the back of my throat, BUT I DIDN’T GO BACK! No flashback!!! If I knew how to do such things, I’d insert a gif of fireworks in here — that’s how it feels. I’m 60 and I maybe, finally, really might, just might be able to get past my crappy childhood — maybe.

Anyway, my plan is to get through the other 60 ? pages today. Then I have to make the changes to the file; then it goes to the Beta readers. But first I have to read it again and the editor’s comments.

I made that square, then made another. It ended up being 4.5″ wide, so it had to be also 4.5″ long to be square, yes?

The cold hung on. Ice cubes regularly went down my back. It has taken me two or three days, but I finally have 9 squares all 4.5″ . I’ve decided to stitch them together, enough knitting for the moment.

The 8th one, yesterday, I started to cry, then stopped. I really have no idea what this is about?

The ninth? That took 3 tries,but I got it done.

So, tonight I’m typing “w” for WordPress and the “about” for my 43things.com account is the top item on the auto fill,and I started to cry.

I have lost the true, first family home I’d ever had. Many of the people I’m still in contact with, but facebook or other sites somehow just aren’t the same. There were various people working on pirate sites or lookalikes, I hope they make it.

The site had been damaged by the folks running it trying to make it into facebook 2 or such instead of embracing what they had that worked. I would have gladly paid to have an account there, but they didn’t try that, but supercheers, a book, a few other things, the spammers, from wordpress mostly invaded, and things just got worse and worse. For months I’ve avoided thinking about 43t being unavailable to me any more. But up until 12/31/14 a snapshot of the site was still available. But that’s gone now too. So this batch of tears surprises me not at all.

The knitting? All I can tell from having done 9 more squares is that I think whatever it is concerns or happened during my casting off. The second stitch of each row was stressy, I shook more, dropped that stitch more often, or what have you. The last square, I was still slightly cold between my shoulders and if I thought about what I was doing, I’d get clumsy, drop stitches, etc. I just knit the 8th one, except for the tears. The 9th as I said, took a few tries. Then I put it aside. I need to stitch the squares together, then make a border and the back. It’s a couch pillow!

I’m sure it will be embarrassingly bad to anyone who knows really how to knit, etc. but when I get this thing done I will be damned proud of myself!

Postscript: DH and I talked about it. The yarn, although still in one of my favorite colorways still is a fuzzy acrylic that picks up anything near it, hair, dust, etc. I don’t really want to introduce/keep such a thing in my home. The house we’re in came with plenty of built-in gotchas for cleaning: crud in the water, ledges in the walls, etc. (I talked about this previously. I’ll add a link at some point to that blog.) I don’t need to add more hard to maintain stuff to my home. So here’s what I’m going to do: clean the other, larger ball of yarn, finish the pillow, and take a pic of it. Then give away the pillow and the yarn. I don’t need to keep the things, but it is important to me to honor myself, I found something that was awful and I made myself get past it. THAT counts; the item in question doesn’t! 1/14/15

I found a LARGE ball of yarn in some of my favorite color combinations in the attic. It was attached to an unfinished (of course) crocheted piece. The piece it was attached to was supposed to be a couch throw. I decided to finish it.

Except. That the hook I used was the wrong size. In the time in the attic, the yarn had gotten all kinds of added stuff: dust, hair, chaff from weeds, you name it. This was the same yarn that had been a HUGE snarl and my MIL spent a couple of days undoing.

So. I was going to finish the couch blanket, then wash and use it. But there was the hook problem, so I took it apart. Then I had TWO very large balls of yarn, both full of little bits of stuff. (It’s fuzzy acrylic.)

I decided to wash the smaller of the two balls of yarn, then knit it into squares. I know how to knit, I learned how in boarding school, about 2nd grade. So I managed to wash the yarn without making it into a huge snarl again. This morning I decided I’d use the largest needles I have and knit a square before I went off to go do my errands.

I started.

And realized I was shaking?

Cast on 10 stitches, knit a row or two, shaking so badly I’m dropping stitches. Um okay, this is just stupid. WHY would knitting a small square make me scared? But it was. Pushed past it, got to the end, dropped a stitch. Retrieved it, dropped it again. By this time my palms are also sweating.

It took me 4 hours, and 4 tries, to make a square of 10 stitches, an approx. 4″ square.

This is, for those of you who don’t have it or something like it, is what PTSD is like. Until this morning, I had no idea that I have some trauma related to knitting. KNITTING?

The only thing I can remember is knitting a square in boarding school, when I first learned to knit, 2nd or 3rd grade it would be. The yarn I was given was a dark federal blue, not any of the bright colors in the popular colorways at the time (the 60s). I thought the color was ugly. I finished the square and didn’t try to knit anything again, until high school.

In high school, I was going to make a blanket. I was knitting triangles and then stitching them into squares. I have no idea what happened to them, but I never finished the blanket, of course.

Since then, I have played around with knitting every now and again, but not with the idea of actually making anything, it was just something to do with my fingers.

So the idea of knitting squares (it would be fast, easy to do in between work, cooking, cleaning, etc.) is something I haven’t considered seriously since 1964-5 and it makes me shake and sweat, with fear.

I have NO idea why this would be so. The needles don’t scare me, the yarn doesn’t scare me. It must be some deeply buried memory associated with that federal blue square, I guess? Dunno. Whatever it is, it sure changed my plans today! I was going to be gone by now to the antique stores. But here I am.

Once I started to shake & sweat, I decided I wouldn’t leave until I finished a square — NO MATTER WHAT! And that took four hours and I’m still shaking. I need to go get dressed so maybe I can accomplish a bit more today.

Odd, at 60? to be in the position to think this, but that’s pretty much where I am.

I spent so much time/life energy fighting the pain, the crapola that came with the abuse, the neglect, the PTSD that resulted from that, yada yada. So, essentially, I’m done. Yeah, I have the house to finish, the memoir to finish, etc. but it’s details.

For DECADES I’ve put aside things, put them off. I couldn’t keep the pain at bay, couldn’t deal with the intensity, couldn’t cope if I let myself get heavily involved in anything other than my…self. Now I don’t need that.

Do I want to go to school? Learn to sew? Try again to write a novel?

The only “goals” I can see are ephemeral, not concrete: be happy, stay in the light, flourish, be creative, and grow.